Gartner: 85 percent of companies using open source

The analysts at Gartner say that 85 percent of 274 companies surveyed are already using open-source software, with the remaining 15 percent expected to do so by next year. The companies surveyed are end-user organizations from around the world; cost is consistently identified as the primary motivator for switching to open source (so much for the freedom of choice, though to be fair, some did mention OSS as a balance against vendor lock-in).

More revealing from the survey though, is the revelation that very few organizations have formal policies in place to protect against intellectual property violations, inadvertent or otherwise. As a result, Gartner says that the biggest barrier preventing the adoption of OSS has to do with area of governance. This includes issues like deciding which applications will be supported by OSS, as well as identifying risks in terms of supportability of OSS. This is important, as an increasing number of companies such as Google to Nokia are releasing open-source software.